VESSEL'S ESCAPE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 133, 8 June 1942, Page 5

VESSEL'S ESCAPE

KEEL SCRAPED BY A TORPEDO

SYDNEY, June 6,

A torpedo fired by a Japanese submarine scraped the keel of an Australian merchant vessel off the New South Wales coast on Thursday morning-, but the ship escaped and the torpedo exploded 200 yards beyond the ship and showered it with fragments.

The ship was the third of those attacked by the Japanese oft; the New South Wales coast on Wednesday.

Members of the crew of the vessel said the torpedo was fired at pointblank range. It exploded with a shattering roar and shook the ship from stem to stern. Bright yellow flashes lit up the scene.

No one was injured, but some of the crew had narrow escapes when one large fragment crashed through the hatch.

One of 25 men from the cargo ship which was sunk on Wednesday who has now been torpedoed seven times —in the North Sea, the Channel, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean— was drawn down with the ship, but forced his way to the surface and clung to a hatch until he was picked up by a lifeboat.

Thy youngest member of the crew, a 15-year-old deck boy, said he was .saved by his mate, the other deck boy. When the two boys got on deck the younger went to one lifeboat, and the older to another. The older boy is missing.